On Disability, Access and technology

I wanted to post a link to one of my favorite disabled bloggers, an autistic person named Amanda Baggs. But I confess I am always worried (maybe this is patronizing of me) about giving her too much publicity because of how poorly people sometimes act towards others. Not that I am concerned about you all in this class – I have great respect for your open-ness to new ideas, but more generally because increasing readership can eventually lead to increasing hostile comments which can be tiring to deal with. Still, she is blogging, so she is aware of the possible repercussions. I would just ask you to read her carefully and consider the implications of posting/linking to her work (as we ought to consider with anyone really) in a wider context.

here’s an amazing video about her language (which involves flapping her hands) that Amanda did

And this blog post is a fascinating window into BOTH how computers and the internet can be liberating but also reveal something about our stereotypes about disability and normality, and challenges many assumptions about mental ability, illness or what people in the disablity activism movement call “neurotypicality.” NT is the abbreviation for “neurotypical” and it means “the idea of what is normal mental functionality” – so this blogger considersherself non-neurotypical. The analogy for NT with respect to gender for would be gender-conforming or in a more biological sense “cisgender” – the first means conforming to dominant gender stereotypes and the second means looking visually like the biological sex you were born with- and the opposites would be non-gender-conforming or “trans.”

I found this video very interesting. I was actually reminded of, when during one of our first group works in class, my group discussed the film ‘Avatar’. We spoke about how the humans (bad ones in the film) are not able to comprehend the relationship the avatars (good) have with the world and consider all the is not similar to their way of relating to things, wrong or crazy. Amanda reminded me of the avatars in the sense that the relationship she has with the environment is nearly a sacred one, and she is deeply in touch with it in a way that the majority of people could never be. Some people are able to have this sort of contact with the external world, however it is usually limited to nature like the countryside (for example the Romantics). Amanda on the other hand is able to have this sort of connection with such simple, quotidian things like the water from the tap, the window, a chair etc.
We see how eloquent she is and how innovative and profound her thoughts are when the robotic female voice is saying what she types. This made me reflect on how language is such a barrier and how limited our conception of intelligence is and how it is nearly always directly associated and judged on one’s ability to speak, use -adequate/ smart vocabulary.

Also if you follow the actual youtube link the related videos on the right are things like ‘bird face’ and ‘plastic surgery gone wrong’ … which enforces the idea of Amanda , as these others, being a freak.

I think this idea of “neurotypicality” is really interesting because of the larger implications it holds not just for disability studies, but gender, sex, and race studies as well. From a scientific or medical approach, normalcy has been based on distribution curves, or rather, finding the middle of a given distribution curve. In this way, normal and abnormal have become evaluative terms and, therefore, are given positive and negative associations. For this reason, the vast majority of disability theorists have rejected the medical model of disability completely and support a fully social model. In “Disability Studies and the Future of Identity Politics”, Tobin Siebers states that the medical model “defines disability as an individual defect lodged in the person, a defect that must be cured or eliminated if the person is to achieve full capacity as a human being”. Since it is not the impairment or physical difference which holds someone back from achieving personhood, and instead cultural, physical, or social barriers of access, the social model can then be combated, whether through education, universal design, etc. The idea of neurotypicality, therefore, is reflective of this notion, and more specifically, Siebers’ theory of complex embodiment–a theory which supports the existence of human physical variety and a need to value it. This idea of biological or mental variance, therefore, can be applied to any identity category in an effort to dismiss normalcy and moreover, counteract hegemony.

One point that I would have to disagree on though, is the need to be selective about who Amanda’s blog is shown to. Although someone may have negative reactions to seeing her video because they don’t understand it, her blog demonstrates how fully she counteracts the stereotypes about mental disability. I think treating issues of disability with kid gloves does nothing to bring disability as a social group into a place of equality. Representations of disability in media are almost nowhere to be seen, and if they are, those shown are used as symbols or “narrative prosthesis”, and as vehicles of sentimentality, exoticism or wonder. The fact that Amanda’s writing is a realistic portrayal of her disability, means that it should not be hid. Although I can in no way relate to the extremity of Amanda’s situation, I have dealt with episodes of aphasia due to a neurological disease and have been in situations where my abilities have been misjudged, and have wanted to say something but didn’t or couldn’t. Even if someone were to be non-receptive of disability, they should still be shown ideas which may counteract their conceptions. In my experience, disability isn’t something many ever think about unless directly faced with. Why limit one’s experience or interaction with this topic? Perhaps being shown a realistic portrayal, instead of a mass media image, will incite a different or more positive reaction. Either way, getting disability talked about more widely is, in my opinion, extremely important in and of itself. And in terms of Amanda, I don’t think getting negative responses will keep her from expressing herself, especially with all the support it looks like she’s getting on her blog and youtube page.